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© 2008 INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION (pp. 510–514)doi:10.1598/JAAL.51.6.7

Around the block and aroundthe world: Teaching literacyacross cultures

Bronwyn T. Williams

Williams teaches at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA; e-mail btwill02@louisville.edu.

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“Public places, the test rooms of virtue withoutinvigilators, are expecting your high score.” Thisnotice, translated from the Chinese characters be-low it, hung above a trash can in a Beijing restau-rant. It provoked a fair amount of laughter fromthe U.S. and Canadian literacy scholars visitingfor a conference who spent several minutes tryingto make meaning from it. It then provoked anequal amount of conversation about the difficul-ties of translation. We all agreed that it was still abetter translation from Chinese to English thanany of us could attempt in the other direction.(The message of the sign, by the way, is that inpublic places, when you are not being observedfor correct behavior, you need to behave properlyby throwing your trash away.)

What intrigued me as much as the issues oftranslation, however, was that the sign had beentranslated into English in the first place. What’smore, the sign, while unconventional to be surefor U.S. and Canadian readers, succeeded in com-municating its message in the appropriate con-text. Communication had occurred.

The world, if not getting smaller, is certainlycommunicating more quickly—and often inEnglish. While not the world traveler some are, Ihave been to much of Europe, to parts of Latin

America, and to China, and I have encounteredEnglish in every place—in street signs, in stores,on television, and in conversations in the street.After returning from the literacy conference I at-tended in China, I have continued to correspondwith students and teachers I met there—always inEnglish. Indeed, with a tendency I am embar-rassed to admit, I have come to rely on the spreadof English during my travels to be able to negoti-ate my way through the world. My facility withother languages is quite poor, and I have left morethan one person puzzled as I struggled to put to-gether a sentence in a language I can only de-scribe as “Span-Italo-French.” And just as likely isthat a passerby will hear my plight and help meout—in English.

Yet, as a combination of empires and globalcapitalism have spread English usage around theworld, it is important to remember that there isnot now just one English but multiple world “eng-lishes.” As many scholars and teachers have ar-gued, language changes to adapt to differentcultural contexts. There is no longer a “singular,canonical English that either could or should betaught any more. Cultural differences and rapidlyshifting communications media meant that thevery nature of the subject of literacy pedagogy waschanging rapidly” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000, p. 5).

Words, images, and video can now flow across na-tional borders with ease. Yet the ease with whichtexts can be transmitted across borders does notmean reading and writing happens without theinfluence of culture. Rain falls without noticingborders, but the cultures on either side of a bordermay describe the rain in very different ways. Lu(2004), for example, described how a single wordsuch as public may have quite different connota-tions and linguistic histories in the United Statesand in China. The result of this cultural differencemay be a difference in translation and wordchoice in English that significantly shifts themeaning of a text.

Yet this world of rapid cross-cultural com-munication is the world in which our studentsread and write. In fact, many students, through e-mail, instant messaging, or online games, are al-ready engaged in reading and writing with youngpeople in other countries. They live their literatelives with increasing contact with people in coun-tries they may never visit, and their literate identi-ties will be read by people in cultures unfamiliarto them. How, then, do we teach reading and writ-ing in an age of cross-cultural communication?How will the emergence of multiple world “eng-lishes” influence how we teach students aboutstandardized English and about issues of lan-guage, culture, and power? How do we respond tostudents who are physically moving across bordersor who are immigrants or part of generation 1.5?And how do we use the new technologies that al-low us to communicate across borders as peda-gogical tools to teach students about writing andreading in a cross-cultural world?

Facing culture and literacyWhen faced with a translation like the sign I men-tioned at the start of this column, the initial re-sponse by many from countries in which Englishis the dominant language is to focus on the un-conventional language use and grammar. The sen-tence is read as being in error and in need ofcorrection to comply with the conventions of

English found in countries such as the UnitedStates, Australia, and the United Kingdom. As Lu(2004) pointed out, however, the sign may be bothcomprehensible and conventional given the cul-ture in which it was written and the cultural con-text of global power. She argued that multipleworld “englishes” were developed to serve the localneeds of people in their home cultures and tosometimes create a form of resistance to the reachof U.S. global economic and cultural power. “Thedesigner of the ‘Chinglish’ signs might be seen as aresistant user of English working in concert withNative Americans, African Americans, and peo-ples across the world to use English against theenglishes of their oppressors” (Lu, 2004, p. 22).

The complex issues of power and culture inrelation to literacy practices came into sharp relieffor me a few years ago at a conference in Cuba.During a roundtable discussion about the influ-ence of culture on literacy education, a Cubanscholar argued that having a uniform nationalculture and language was essential for maintain-ing a strong national identity against the culturalinfluences of a more powerful and hostile neigh-bor to the north. The government and the educa-tional system, he said, were vital tools inreinforcing and promoting a united language andculture. In response, a colleague from SouthAfrica respectfully noted that the concept of auniform national culture and language, promotedand maintained by government and schools, hadbeen used for years as a weapon of oppression ofpeople and cultures in her country. She said thatit continued to be a struggle to get studentswhose cultures had been discounted and margin-alized to value their own experiences and trustschools as places where they could learn withoutforfeiting their identities.

The complexities of literacy, culture, identi-ty, and world “englishes” can often seem over-whelming and can lead to questions of whetherthere is anything we can consider to be universal.What values, ways of understanding the world,and approaches to literacy can we assume weshare with people across cultures? When we say

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that a person is reading or writing in English, canwe be confident we know what is meant by thatstatement? At the same time, we are faced withquestions of how we respond to values and ap-proaches that seem quite different from our own.Do we try to adapt to the differences or resistthem? Do we reach some kind of hybrid compro-mise or retreat with the desire to let differencesalone? Or do we shrug off such differences with acynical acceptance that some of them cannot beovercome, so why bother?

Although it may not initially seem to get usvery far, the very recognition that literacy practicesare inextricable from culture is an important uni-versal concept. Literacy, how it is defined, who getsto employ it, and for what ends, is always culturallycontextual. Such contexts are shaped by local con-cerns and, increasingly, issues of global economicsand communication. Acknowledging the culturallysituated nature of reading and writing requires usto not rush to judgment when we encounter a textin English that has crossed borders. Instead, Lu(2004) encouraged us to take a dual approach toreading such texts and consider how we read themagainst our cultural experiences and expectationsfor standardized English writing as well as howand why the individual writer may have composeda text with features different than we expect.

If there is another universal truth concern-ing literacy practices across cultures it is that hu-mans are meaning-making creatures. We all wantto be heard, to tell our stories, to communicateour ideas to others. Reading and writing allow usto connect our minds to others—even when thework may be detached from personal experience.Literacy educators around the world must thinkabout how writing connects ideas and experi-ences to audiences. The questions of what moti-vates individuals to read and write are present,even if only implicitly, in classrooms across cul-tures. When we write, we all hope to be under-stood. When we read, we hope to understand.

If the desires to make meaning and commu-nicate with others are universal concepts in literacy,the details of how we do so across cultures often

run aground on the realities of our differences. Weassume, because we recognize the words as English,that we can decode the meaning of the text. Yetsomehow the words and sentences don’t makesense. Or they make sense but are so different fromour conventions that we assume a level of linguis-tic, and perhaps even cognitive, deficiency on thepart of the other person. Obviously, apathy and un-thinking relativism or cynicism about the impossi-bility of communication are not the answer. Andwe cannot expect an adherence to our conventionsof English literacy that may run counter or be in-comprehensible to another culture.

We can, however, turn to scholarship andconsider what literacy theorists and researchers(Canagarajah, 2002; Fox, 1994; Harklau, Losey, &Siegal, 1999; Lu, 2004; Schroeder, Fox, & Bizzell,2002; Stein, 2007; Williams, 2003) have been de-scribing in recent years about world “englishes” andliteracy education. We also need to be thinkingabout how we can join dedicated teachers aroundthe world who are engaging these questions in waysthat explore how the language and literacy is grow-ing and transforming students and their cultures.

Teaching literacy acrossculturesOne important starting point for this explorationof literacy is to find out from students about theexperiences they have had in reading and writingacross cultures. The degree to which this happensdepends on individual students, of course. Still, Iam no longer surprised when I find out that stu-dents have already been in contact with texts fromother parts of the world. For some students, it issimply a matter of watching anime cartoons orreading manga from Japan. For others, it is playingvideo and computer games online with otheryoung people from every continent. Still other stu-dents have, through online games or fan fictions,made friends in other countries with whom theyregularly converse through instant messaging ande-mail. Compared with the experiences of theirteachers when they were young, many more of our

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students have had contact with texts and writingfrom other cultures. Simply by engaging them inconversations about what they have encountered,understood, or been confused by, we can begin tohave useful discussions about how language andliteracy work in our contemporary world. To addto the conversation, we can visit webpages in classor, if the technology is not available, print outpages and use them as starting points for thinkingabout how communication is or is not effective.

Teachers who want to take a second step inthis exploration can engage students in discus-sions and assignments about how they wouldcommunicate with a person in a different culture.This means more than simply doing a reportabout another country and its colorful customs.The kinds of assignments I am talking aboutwould have students research the history of litera-cy in that culture. A student could find out whenreading and writing first emerged, who has tradi-tionally been taught to read and write in the cul-ture, how education was structured, and whatkind of writing has developed. The difference be-tween China’s ideographic writing and theEnglish phonetic alphabet is important in under-standing how ideas are communicated. When didEnglish begin to be widely used in the country? IsEnglish taught in the schools? At what level is ittaught? What kind of reading and writing doyoung people do in and out of school? Whatkinds of stories, poems, and articles are tradition-ally valued? Obviously, the number of questionsstudents pursue depends on the level of the stu-dents. Yet even discussing some of these questionscan help students understand that reading andwriting are not static skills—they develop andchange with a culture, including their own.

Finally, the technologies that allow literacyto cross borders so easily are also available as ped-agogical tools. Students can compare websitesfrom other cultures with sites they are familiarwith in their own, such as school websites. Itwould be even better to put students into writtencommunication with their counterparts in othercountries as a way to bring life to the realities of

writing and reading across borders. Many teach-ers around the world create such opportunitiesfor their students. The necessity of negotiatingwritten communication across cultures revealsfor students the excitement and the frustration ofthe endeavor. Regardless of what they are discussing—a common text, world events, popu-lar culture, local life, the questions about literacyeducation I mentioned above—students will findthat they learn a great deal through communica-tion and miscommunication. Students realizethat their writing has a real audience and that thecultural shorthand they may use with their localfriends online can’t be depended on in order tomake themselves understood.

The key to learning in such a project lies inthe reflection the students engage in after theyhave been online with students from other coun-tries. Whether in discussion or in writing, it is thequestions we ask afterward, in terms of where thedifficulties and successes of reading and writingoccurred, that give students the chance to buildknowledge from their experiences. Such experi-ences make students face questions of what hap-pens to identity when reading and writing moveacross borders. Who has power? Who decideswhat is correct, what is acceptable, and what ispersuasive? How did they think about the identi-ties they wanted to present in their writing?

The novelist Caryl Phillips said that move-ment was the great narrative of the 20th century(personal communication, December 16, 1994). Asthe physical movement to which Phillips referredcontinues, it has been supplemented and expandedby the virtual movement made possible by newtechnologies. We are all facing a world in which wemust read and write with people from other coun-tries and other cultures. These technological possi-bilities challenge our ideas about how we makemeaning from experience and communicate thatmeaning in words and images. I am a hopeful per-son. I have been touched by the kindness, curiosity,and integrity of people everywhere I have traveled.I believe that, contrary to the popular catchphraseextolling economic globalization, the world is not

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flat. Culture and the literacy practices that are partof culture create glorious mountains and valleysand rivers that are simultaneously obstacles tocommunication and new landmarks of under-standing. If we are to navigate these unfamiliar lit-eracy landscapes, we must learn to do so fromthose who know them best. If we can both learnfrom and teach others across borders then the op-portunities for reading and writing across culturescan, in the words of Fox (2007), help us “transformlanguages of harm into literacies of hope.”

REFERENCESCanagarajah, A.S. (2002). A geopolitics of academic writing.

Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Cope, B., & Kalantzis, M. (2000). Multiliteracies: The begin-

nings of an idea. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.),

Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social fu-

tures (pp. 3–8). London: Routledge.

Fox, H. (1994). Listening to the world: Cultural issues in aca-

demic writing. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers

of English.

Fox, R. (2007, July). Literacies of harm and hope. Paper pre-

sented at the China–U.S. Conference on Literacy, Beijing,

China.

Harklau, L., Losey, K.M., & Siegal, M. (Eds.). (1999).

Generation 1.5 meets college composition: Issues in the

teaching of writing to U.S.-educated learners of ESL.

Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Lu, M. (2004). An essay on the work of composition:

Composing English against the order of fast capitalism.

College Composition and Communication, 56, 16–50.

Schroeder, C., Fox, H., & Bizzell, P. (Eds.). (2002). ALT DIS:

Alternative discourses and the academy. Portsmouth, NH:

Heinemann Boynton/Cook.

Stein, P. (2007). Multimodal pedagogies in diverse classrooms.

London: Routledge.

Williams, B.T. (2003). Speak for yourself? Power and hy-

bridity in the cross-cultural classroom. College

Composition and Communication, 54, 586–609.

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The department editor welcomes reader comments. Bronwyn T. Williams teaches at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA; e-mailbtwill02@louisville.edu